Basil and Gregory’s Sermons on Usury: Credit Where Credit Is Due

Significant features in St. Gregory of Nyssa’s sermon Contra usurarios indicate that the younger brother of St. Basil the Great did not merely imitate the latter’s earlier contribution on the destructive and corrosive nature of usury. Gregory’s homily has an internal integrity that sets it apart from Basil’s Homilia in psalmum 14. Though they used common themes when writing about usury—theft, falsehood, anxiety, enslavement, heavenly usury, and the natural world—Basil and Gregory approached these themes differently, were inspired and influenced by different Scripture and philosophy, and had different motives.